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Imagine this: a smiling the Danish striker wearing Napoli's colors. Next, place that with a dejected Benjamin Sesko sporting United's jersey, appearing like he just missed a sitter. Don't worry finding an actual photo of him missing; background information is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post the image across all platforms.

Would you mention that Højlund's tally features scores in the Champions League while Sesko does not compete in Europe? Of course not. Nor will you note that four of the Dane's goals came against weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Slovenia and generates far more chances. You run online for a large outlet, pure interaction is what pays the bills, Manchester United are the prime target, and context is the thing to avoid.

Thus the wheel of content turns. The next job is to sift through a 44-minute interview with the legendary goalkeeper and extract the part where he describes the acquisition of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel qualifies his comments by saying, "Nothing negative to say about Benjamin Sesko"... yes, remove that part. Nobody needs that. Just make sure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the headline. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Promise and Hasty Opinions

The heart of fall has traditionally one of my favourite periods to observe football. The leaves swirl, winds shift, squads and strategies are still fresh, all is novel and yet everything is beginning to form. Key players of the coming months are staking their claims. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the multiple trophies yet. All teams are in contention. At this precise point, all is possibility.

Yet, for many of the same reasons, this period has long been one of my most disliked times to consume news on football. Because although no outcomes are decided, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is reborn. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league at this moment? We need an answer now.

Sesko as Patient Zero

And for numerous reasons, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, unavoidable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and tactical sophistication to develop. And the demand to produce permanent definitive judgment, a conveyor belt of opinions and jokes, out-of-context condemnations and pointless contrasts, a square that can not truly be circled.

I do not propose to offer a substantive analysis of Sesko's time at Manchester United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the Premier League in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a mere of 116 touches. What exactly are we analysing? And will I attempt to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two famous analysts duel passionately on a popular show over whether he needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like twelve or thirteen (the other).

A Cruel Environment

For all this I loved watching Sesko at Leipzig: a powerful, screeching sports car of a striker, playing in a team pitched perfectly to his talents: given the license to rampage but also the freedom to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the most unforgiving place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are summarily issued in roughly the duration it takes to watch a short advertisement, the club with the widest and most ruthless gap between the time and air he needs, and the time and air he is going to get.

We saw an example of this during the international break, when a viral chart conveniently informed us that the player had been judged – decisively – the poorest acquisition of the recent market by a survey of football representatives. Naturally, the press are not alone in this. Team social media, online personalities, anonymous X accounts with a suspiciously high number of fake followers: everybody with a vested interest is now essentially operating along the same principles, an environment explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Mental Cost

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Are we aware, on some level, what this endless sluice of irritation is doing to our brains? Separate from the inherent strangeness of playing in the middle of it all, aware on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about players is now essentially material, commodity, open-source property to be repackaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because United are United, the corpse that continues to feed the narrative, a major institution that must always be generating the big feelings. But also, partly this is a seasonal affliction, a pendulum of opinion most visibly and cruelly glimpsed at this season, roughly four weeks after the window has closed. Throughout the summer we have been desiring footballers, praising them, drooling over them. Yet, only a handful of games later, a lot of those very players are now being dismissed as failures. Is it time to worry about Jamie Gittens? Was Arsenal's purchase of their striker wise? What was the point of Randal Kolo Muani?

The Bigger Picture

It feels appropriate that he meets Liverpool on the weekend: a team simultaneously on a long unbeaten run at home in the league and somehow in their own situation of perceived turmoil, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Mohamed Salah past his prime. Alexander Isak an expensive flop. The coach losing his hair.

Maybe we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football the actual game, to influence the way we view it, an whole competition reoriented around talking points and reaction, something that occurs in the background while we browse through our phones, incapable to detach from the constant flow of opinions and more takes. Perhaps Sesko taking the hit right now. However, we're all sacrificing a part of the experience here.